Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

Like all the very greatest rock singers, Mark E Smith was a complex man, often difficult bordering on impossible. Yet when I heard of his passing, after a very public illness these past few months, I found myself laughing aloud, as some of his countless hilarious pronouncements over the years, and the hilarity that ensued on the handful of times that I met him, flooded into my head.

And then of course, the vision of him onstage, the anti-performer, growling and yelling indecipherably over the Fall's gruelling, but ever-exhilarating noise.

Tony Wilson, his fellow Mancunian, who never got to release Fall records on his Factory label, but who was the first to interview him on TV circa 1978, used...